Latest Stories

Google Gets More Bad Imagery Press

As if Google Streetview wasn’t giving Google PR people enough headaches, apparently the would-be JFK terrorists loved Google Earth’s image quality so much they used it to to size up that New York airport for their planned attack. And now that Drudge is on The Smoking Gun’s story, the politicians will be right behind.

In a federal criminal complaint, an excerpt from which you’ll find below, one of the accused, Abdul Kadir, reportedly told cohorts to use the popular satellite software after he determined that surveillance video shot by the men was “not sufficiently detailed for operational purposes.”

This is, of course, mostly wrong-headed nervousness. Any technology can be used for many purposes — if terrorists used Macs would we be going after Apple? — but we are the most nervous about the newest technologies. In this case, we are so nervous about the newly transparent society (hat tip, David Brin) in which we live, we are looking for reasons to panic about image technology — and we’ll find ‘em.